


A Seven Nation Army Couldn't Hold Me Back

by Arkie



Series: DJ, Turn Up The F*king Sound [UMY Garbage Court] [7]
Category: Hat Films - Fandom, The Yogscast
Genre: 1963, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Blood and Violence, Conflicting Ideologies, Developing Relationship, Kelpies, M/M, Mild Gore, Romance, Selkies, Time Period - 1960's, Urban Magic Yogs, Well - Freeform, mild-ish, umy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-22
Updated: 2019-08-22
Packaged: 2020-09-24 01:14:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20349922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arkie/pseuds/Arkie
Summary: Trott is the selkie that comes out of the ocean.Smith is the kelpie that watches, and seethes.





	A Seven Nation Army Couldn't Hold Me Back

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Seven Nation Army by the White Stripes, specifically Glitch Mod remix. Also, clarity's sake - the city mentioned here is not the same as in most of the series. Enjoy!

It was a grey wintry day when the selkie walked from the ocean on two feet, holding a sealskin in one hand and bringing with him all the force of the seven seas. 

Everyone in the coastal city felt it, whether they chose to acknowledge it or not. 

He looked up with the brown eyes of soft, feathered rocks, floating and waving in the gentle sway of the sea, easy to push, happy to move with the flow and swells of the everyday, of nature and the unknowable nature of the sea. All that rejected. Gone cold, gone hot, gone bright and glowing, every dramatic feeling, every intention, every possibility. All before him. Skyscrapers and streets of rickety automobiles and noise and lights not yet ready to behold him. 

He looked down at the sand, at the trail of unlaid footsteps, clear as day and invisible to all but him. Those behind him had already been swept clear by the tide lapping inches from his heels. 

He took the first step, and it stayed. He smiled. 

\---

Smith saw all of this. But, later, he couldn't recall if it had been with his eyes or through the magic. Showing him that which was important. A key in a lock; a loaded gun. A warning, or a threat. 

\---

The effects of the selkie's appearance began in ripples from near the very moment he stepped out of the water, and it infuriated Smith. No one else was very happy about it, either. 

\---

The very first thing the selkie did on land was kill a young couple. Snapped one's neck, choked the other, just off the beach on a sandy dirt track. He grinned wide, at the emptiness, the loss, the _potential_. All gone. All because of him. 

With the rush of the murder - the sickly, energising, and thoroughly magical rush - he found it easy to wander into the nearest powerhouse of a building, step through the flimsy blockage of charms and demand an audience with its head. Humans scattered and ran for the doors, even without knowing why. Instincts too strong, too deeply laid. An age-old bid for self-preservation. 

He never stopped smiling. 

\---

When Smith first ran into him, he'd had a near twenty four hours to build his annoyance at this newcomer, this young thing, swanning in thinking he can do as he pleases, disrupt the norm, try to upset the careful balance of things in the city. 

The selkie had pilfered the young couple for their clothes, and wore a mix of them both, whatever took his fancy, without care for cultural acceptances or standards. He looked good.

Even dressed more regularly in a leather jacket and jeans, Smith knew he stood out on a street full of humans, as something of the _other_. So he felt adequately insulted when the selkie's gaze hardly paused on him. Brushed over, tossed aside. As though judging him not even worth his time. 

Before he could walk past and disappear entirely, the humans about him giving him an unconsciously wide berth, Smith spat at his back, "_hey_."

The selkie stopped, and turned, his brows raised. As though surprised Smith had _deigned _speak to him, interrupt his path.

"Yes?" 

Smith was struck by the utter _nobility _of the creature. Near a full head shorter than him, yet somehow still managing to look down on him.

Nevertheless, he grinned a frightening grin and sneered: "It's polite to greet an important resident when you see them."

The selkie raised a skeptical brow; looked him down, and back up. Oddly invasive, an x-ray skewering straight through his clothes, as though seeing him for exactly who he was.

The selkie met his eyes and smiled, slightly, in a fake, mock-pitying sort of way. "I didn't think you were anything special."

As Smith reeled at the bloody _nerve_, the bloody _insolence_, the selkie turned and walked away, vanishing into the crowds of bustling humans. 

\---

"I'd like a knife," the selkie hummed to a renowned sorceress, newly-met and tense beneath her finery of crystals and precious metals, high in her urban tower. "I think I'll take yours." 

"I've never gotten to use one before," he breathed, later, gazing at the dagger inlaid with jewels in his hands. "What use do seals have for tools? Between the sea and the shore, we're supposed to have all we need. But I've always thought they looked rather fun." He swung it gently, slicing the air. 

He grinned down at her. "I don't suppose you'd mind helping me get the hang of it?" 

\---

He's turning eyes, from all directions. They all burned with a building fury. 

\---

They next time they met, it was in an alleyway lit dimly by a streetlight outside. Tarmac glittered in the rain. 

Smith was already irritated - he'd abandoned a conquest, his would-be meal, in order to follow the nearby presence, throbbing on the edges of his internal vision. 

He watched the selkie stroll up to someone, farther down the alley. Talk to them, softly. Knew he was there, probably. Didn't care, as usual. 

The other figure was a human, or a mostly-human. Spoke gruffly, dismissing the selkie's advances, whatever they were. 

They snarked something with finality and brushed past, heading to the alley's exit. They didn't look at Smith, half-invisible at his will. But they had made it hardly a step before the selkie turned, and with a terrible smoothness driven an embellished dagger into their back, likely sinking straight through to their heart. He looked calm with the action - happy, even. Like things had turned out just as he'd hoped. 

The human staggered and froze, eyes wide, the breath driven out of them. The selkie pulled the knife from their back, still ignoring Smith, and drove it into the side of their throat instead. They choked, gurgled, crumbling to the ground. Clothes soaking in their own blood, drowning internally in a pool of it. 

The selkie began chuckling, light and sick and uncontrollable. 

He threw his arms wide and spun on the spot, eyes closed and face tilted up to the rain. 

"Oh, don't you just _love _it!" he called out on a sigh. 

He spun to a standstill, and his eyes slid half-open, immediately locked on Smith's. A slow, airy grin spread across his face.

"But you _do_, don't you?" 

He stalked closer, steps swinging and slow. "You're a kelpie, aren't you?" Smith glared in response. Didn't want to give him an inch, however irritating. "You probably know _all _about how it feels. To drain a life."

The selkie stopped, just barely inside his personal space. Too close for comfort. 

"I don't know _anything_." He said this conspiratorially low, grinning, as though it was the most exciting thing he'd ever heard. "I never felt it til I came on land. I'm learning every day. Whereas _you_," - he blinked, slowly, and Smith idly noted the urge to fall headlong into those eyes of shining amber - "_you'_ve probably felt it every day of your life. Getting that rush, that," - he made a gesture of relish - "_sustenance_." 

Smith failed to keep himself from retorting. 

"I'm a kelpie," he bit, squinting. "You're a selkie. You can eat the food eaten by humans and the like." He shook his head slightly. "It's not the sustenance you're after. It's the power."

The selkie stilled, watching him with a faint air of surprise. Then, very slowly, he grinned. "Well, can I say no?" He tilted his head, looked him up and down in an pleased sort of way. "You're a clever one, aren't you?" 

Smith ignored the irritating compliment. "The humans are starting to feel unsafe. You're causing a lot of trouble for a lot of people. You need to seriously consider exactly what that _rush_," he sneered, "is worth to you."

The selkie only smiled. "Oh, kelpie." He reached up to give Smith a pat on the cheek. "You care too much. You don't need to worry about me."

He spoke the last words slowly, with a low sort of earnestness that had Smith oddly sure he meant it.

With that, the selkie gave him a parting smile, turned and swept up his fancy knife from the congealing blood around the body's neck, and sashayed away towards the street. 

Smith glared after him. Frustrated in a way he couldn't quite explain.

After a moment, he called after him. "You not going to give me your name?" 

The selkie paused, and tipped his head to one side, thoughtful. 

"I haven't decided on one yet," he gave, eventually. Then he strode away into the bright streetlights of the city. And Smith was left standing in a dark, damp alleyway, alone. With a corpse lying in a puddle of red rain at his feet. 

\---

Smith sensed the selkie's exploits with increasing severity as his ambitions grew. Like the rising and falling of a foreign heartbeat in the back of his mind. Everyone else did, too. It was becoming harder to think his presence no more than a minor nuisance. 

\---

Next, it was in the middle of a chase. 

Smith felt it ongoing from a street over. 

He stepped to intercept at a sidestreet, empty at this early hour. 

The selkie was _running_. Practically flying, with a smoothness that only came with a helpful nudge from the magic. 

Smith grabbed him before he passed, and the selkie spun, sealskin flying out behind from where it'd been tied in a knot around his neck. 

Smith held him hard by the arms, and the selkie _laughed_ in his grip, breathlessly. Sagging slightly into him, as though using him for a short rest. He tottered slightly on his feet, unsteady but completely relaxed, and it drove Smith insane. He could have snarled. Where was this selkie's _sense?_

"What are you _doing?_" he demanded viciously. He wanted to _understand_. 

The selkie laughed again. "_Well_, kelpie."

He glanced back the way he came. It remained empty, though Smith could feel the presence drawing nearer. The _angry_ presence.

"It turns out well witches get rather grumpy when you disturb their beauty sleep. Nasty piece of work, aren't they?"

He broke off into high, breathless chuckles at his understatement, near collapsing. Smith had to hold him up just to continue the conversation, and that infuriated him. 

But then the words registered and his mouth fell open, grip going slack. "You pissed off the _Well Witch_?" 

The selkie managed to retain his feet and chuckled. "Don't worry, horsey." He tapped Smith's nose with a finger. "I have a plan." 

"You can't just--" Smith gaped. "You can't just take on _the Well Witch_." 

"Oh, really?" The selkie was smiling, voice light in such a way it seemed he was merely humouring Smith's shock. "Why's that?" 

"They're... one of the most powerful beings in the city," Smith said slowly, desperate to make this selkie get the message so he can see some _sense_. "Even without a _court_. They don't _need _one, that's how powerful this thing is. You're new here, you don't get it, if you'd just _ask _anybody--."

"In the ocean," the selkie interrupted suddenly, imperiously. At some point, his hands had ended up on Smith's shoulders. He stroked his thumb over one, soothing and distracting in equal parts. "Seals eat fish, and orcas eat seals. There's no way around it, that's just the way of things. Here, it's different. Anybody can be anybody. Shadows can be larger than the fish. Conceptions can be wrong. Or they can be useful."

He shook his head, slowly. A smile on his lips, small and sincere, with just a hint of the craziness embodying his very being. "In the sea, no seal is going to eat an orca. Up here, there _are no limits_." 

Smith grasped for words for a moment, speechless at the declaration.

He fumbled together a scowl to gather himself. "You're still insane. You're practically suicidal."

The selkie reached up to stroke his cheek, and Smith suddenly realised that at some point his own hands had shifted to grip the selkie's hips. He jolted to let go, but then hesitated, unable to quite release completely. His fingers danced awkwardly on the selkie's sides, and though he was sure the selkie was perfectly aware of all this, he didn't show it. Instead, his hot eyes held him, calming and quieting. Though still smiling. Still so frustratingly predatory, for something that's supposed to be _prey_.

"Suicidal? No. But I think maybe a little crazy is essential in life." He was very, very close. 

But just as Smith was leaning in, the selkie brushed out of his grip and drifted away, wearing a knowing smile. Smith's fingers closed around air, belatedly. So surprised at the turn of events he didn't even think to get angry. 

"You'd best clear off, kelpie," the selkie advised, head high and grin tilted. High and mighty as anything. "You wouldn't want to get caught by _the Well Witch_." 

"My name is Smith," Smith shot out without thinking. Growing grated by the repeated creature title, impersonal and irritating. 

The selkie smiled, a little wider. "That's nice." And then he was gone. 

And he was right, too - Smith hated to follow anything that came out of that creature's mouth, but he knew better than to hang around waiting for his formidable pursuer showed up. So, he disappeared too, wondering if he'd ever actually see the selkie alive again. 

\---

Something _happened_ to the Well Witch. 

Smith wasn't sure if they were dead, or just absent, or somehow contained through some magic. 

But neither he nor anyone else could deny their presence had practically vanished. One of the greater powers in the city, downed and dismantled after a run in with one of the newest and, theoretically, weakest. 

The other, largely superior powers were growing antsy, and beginning to close ranks in uncertainty. They'd never admit it, though, of course. 

\---

One of those greater powers approached Smith. With promises of rewards, respect anew in fae circles, a chance to break out of his low status in the city, hardly better than the scum of the pavement beneath their boots. Smith didn't care for any such things; he'd rather avoid those great pretentious pillars of status so many grovel after completely than anything else. But he agreed anyway. For his own interest. And for the chance of stopping that damn selkie in his tracks, to crush him like the insect he was before he was the cause of any more chaos. Or that's what he told himself. 

So he waited outside the great magic hub of a warehouse squashed on the edge of the city like the guard dog he apparently now was. He wandered the verges, bored, one hand stuck in the pocket of his leather jacket, the other holding aloft a glowing cigarette, listening out with more sense than one. He wasn't nervous - he was angry, chomping at the bit like everyone else to take a bite of the selkie's proud and presumptuous form. To take him down a peg like he deserved. 

The selkie, when he eventually wandered up, payed him insultingly little attention. He mainly had eyes only for the large windows far above, dark and leading into the warehouse. While Smith scowled and stamped out his cigarette, the selkie sent a surreptitious glance down the side of the wall. Looking for some way into the fae gathering, probably. 

"Strange to see you here, kelpie," the selkie greeted airily, sending him a glance. "Lowered to the status of _servant_, I see. And here _I _thought you worked alone." He sent him a raised-brow glance.

Smith ignored him completely and tried not to be riled by the lack of use of his offered name. "You're not supposed to be here," he snapped. "You gunna leave, or will I have to make you?" 

The selkie only smiled at the challenge. "Oh? And what on all the Earth do you have, kelpie, that everyone else has not?" 

Smith ground his teeth. "I'm not playing your stupid fucking word games, selkie. Leave, now - hell, get the fuck out of this fucking city. Or you'll get your dues from someone not nearly as nice as me." He grinned, in a snarling, bared-teeth sort of a way. 

The selkie laughed. "I'm really not sure what you're not getting, kelpie." He sauntered closer. "I don't care what anyone _wants _me to do. This world is my playground, and this city is my first stop." He chuckled, with an edge of crazy, shaking his head. "This city will _quake _under my boot." 

Smith squinted at the hint. "So that's your plan, then? To take over the city? Or are you just content to cause as much chaos as possible before it all collapses around your fucking ears?" 

The selkie laughed, and started glancing about again, seemingly just about done with the conversation. He sent an idle grin Smith's way. "Well, let's just see how we go, hm?" 

Grinding his teeth at the lack of common sense, the lack of logic, the lack of _playing by their rules_, Smith snarled. "You're _not _going in there."

Already starting to wander, starting to back away, the selkie stopped to send him a grin and a pair of raised brows. "Oh?" His voice dropped to a whisper. "You going to stop me?"

That was the last straw - Smith growled and grabbed him so he couldn't slip away again and ducked to slam their lips together. Instantly, he felt the selkie's lips curl into a smile, without an ounce of surprise, and that made Smith even more furious.

He moved aggressively, forcing his way into the selkie's mouth, but the selkie matched him beat for beat, kissing back hard, both hands moving upwards to grip Smith's hair. The grip hurt and Smith snarled and spun them, slamming the selkie into the wall in retribution. He felt him gasp and felt a rush of satisfaction, but then the creature laughed against his lips and kissed him harder, arms winding tight around Smith's neck as Smith's fingers dug into his sides in a grip that had to be by far hard enough to hurt, retaliation for his reaction. As though he was _happy_. As though he was still somehow _in control_. 

Smith growled and yanked him forward to slam back into the wall with all his strength. The selkie only grunted and didn't let up the liplocked battle. Smith pushed harder, gripped harder, delved deeper. But he was horrified to realise he was running out of steam. Running out of ideas. It didn't matter what he did, the selkie took it all as though it was nothing. As though this were just a bit of light fun. A game. A mild distraction on the side of his real focus. Not unwelcome, but not sought after. 

Feeling oddly shaken, oddly empty, Smith was slowing. Frowning. He didn't need to breathe, strictly, at least not like some creatures do, but he was breathless nonetheless as he pulled away.

The selkie kept his eyes closed a little longer, making use of Smith's slackening grip to chase the contact, savouring the final kiss. 

Then he slumped back against the wall, breathing hard, fingers still loosely tangled in Smith's hair. He opened his eyes, and he was smiling. 

"You won't find what you're looking for in there, kelpie," he breathed. 

Smith had no idea how to respond to that. 

"Smith," he spat instead in correction. 

The selkie stroked his hair, and Smith wasn't sure if he liked or didn't like his smile. It was smug and insulting, for sure, but there was something else, too - something vaguely wistful, that looked a lot like pity. 

"_Smith_," the selkie corrected himself, humouring him. 

A few moments passed. The selkie ran his fingers through his hair, gentle and irritating. A cool very early morning breeze ruffled them both and a bird sang. 

"I _am _going in there, Smith," the selkie murmured, gently. 

Smith frowned. Didn't quite have the energy or care to scowl properly. "You think I can't stop you?" he grumbled. He flexed his arms, hands still on the selkie's waist. "That I don't have the _strength _to stop you?" 

The selkie smiled, rueful, and ran an admiring sort of hand up Smith's arm. Utterly relaxed. "Oh, I'm certain you have the _strength_." He looked up to smile at him, small and sure. "But no, I know you can't." 

"How the hell do you figure that?" 

"Because I know," he paused, for effect, and to stroke some fingers over Smith's cheek, "you _won't_." 

With that - with Smith rendered speechless for what felt like the dozenth time in far too short a stretch - the selkie slipped out from his grip, which he suddenly realised was a lot weaker than it should have been, and strode away. Off along the side of the warehouse, focussed entirely on pinpointing the weak spot in its boundary he'd sensed some time ago. And Smith didn't stop him. 

He wouldn't get his promised reward, but that was alright. He'd never cared much for the legendary so-called 'great powers' of the city. 

\---

He ran before he could be punished for his discrepancy. It wasn't like he could sink any lower on the city hierarchy. 

\---

The selkie survived the encounter, whatever it was, obviously. Smith didn't know the specifics of what went down in that warehouse, but there was no denying the stirring balance of things. Maybe it was a much need shakeup. But who was he to have an opinion on such things?

\---

The first time they slept together, it was a lot less like sleep and much more of a quick fuck at the dark end of an alley in the city. 

"You sure know how to show a guy a good time, don't you?" the selkie grumbled against his lips, shifting against the grit against his back. 

"Shut up," Smith grunted back. And then, somehow, they were both too lost in the heat of it - the skin, the crush, the sharing power about it - to complain. 

\---

The selkie didn't bring his seal coat around anymore. Smith wondered, vaguely, where he kept it. 

\---

Smith kept his nose out of ongoing city business for a little while. His focus wasn't there - it was on the selkie himself, who he now ran into on an even more regular basis. For sex, or a make out, or simply some heated words. 

But no matter how hard Smith held onto him, he always slipped away in the end. Disappearing around a corner, or through a doorway, or seemingly into the thin air between his hands. To return to causing whatever mayhem was on his mind on the given day. Smith wished he would just _stay still._ He wished he could just _make him_. 

\---

"Why _'Smith'_, though?" the selkie wondered aloud one day. 

They were laying haphazardly across Smith's bed, located in his tiny hovel of a city home, down a backalley and through a filthy corridor always banging with noise of some sort or other. 

The selkie was idly inspecting one of Smith's knickknacks he'd collected over the years - a little horse figurine, a gift from a would-be victim many years go. He knew he shouldn't collect such things. By his nature, his instinct was to own nothing but the clothes on his back. Not even those, sometimes. Always be on the move, ready to abandon ship at a moment's notice, to wander or flee to a new hunting ground. 

A horse, as well. A little on the nose, maybe, but it wasn't like he'd had to worry about anyone seeing his place until now. 

"Why would you pick such an incredibly _boring _name?" The selkie's tone was vaguely judgemental. "An incredibly _human _name?"

Smith frowned and wondered how to reply, eyes on the little horse. "It... means something to me." 

The selkie frowned slightly at that, surprised. "Oh." 

He stared a moment longer at the figurine, as though trying to unlock its secrets by gaze alone when his fingers bore no fruit. Then he shrugged and set it down, sweeping off the bed to start finding his clothes, pulling them on. 

Smith glared, sullenly, from the bed. "You're going?" 

"Yes, Smith," the selkie replied airily, fixing the shoulders of the cropped denim jacket he'd found and become so fond of. "People to see, things to do - you know how it is." 

Smith ground his teeth. "It's not like you _have _to. No one's _making you_." 

The selkie laughed lightly. "Yes. Exactly the point, Smith. Try not to worry too much while I'm gone." He finished doing up his shoes, and made for the door. 

"Would you just-- _stop?_" 

Before Smith knew what he was doing, he lunged across the bed and jerked the selkie to a halt by the shoulder, who glanced down to send him an unconcerned sort of raised brow. 

"They're getting _angrier _by the day," Smith growled, in the absence of anything else. "You _know _they are. At this point, they won't be contented with just killing you, they'll come up with something worse, much worse - some unbearable torture you'll live through for the rest of your days. Why won't you just-- _quit _while you're ahead?" 

The selkie sighed, sort of. Gave a small, pitying sort of smile. 

"Now, Smith. Why quit while you're ahead, when there's still so much to do?"

Smith hardly felt the fingertips that brushed his hand from the selkie's shoulder, they were so light. But the next thing he knew he was grasping air, as the door closed behind the retreating fae's back. 

He paused a moment. Then he snarled, wordlessly, and grabbed the nearest thing - a lamp - a threw it hard against the wall. It smashed, and glass and ceramic went everywhere. 

\---

He seethed a while, but that was how it went. They met, largely by accident, spent some length of time together, then the selkie disappeared. But something was building in the back of Smith's mind. A certain kind of rage, a certain frustration. He'd forgotten what it felt like, to not simply drift aimlessly, moving from kill to kill. He felt a _drive_, an urge to _act_, to wrench back _control_, that he hadn't felt in a very long time. He wouldn't go so far as to say he was _grateful_, though. It wasn't as if he was enjoying it. He was near pulling his hair out at all times with this selkie's actions. He _liked _the norm. It was familiar, and easy, and safe. The selkie was the very embodiment of self-destructive chaos. A firework that'll burn itself out after a few moments of glory. And Smith would be loathe to be brought down with him. 

('Why, then, doesn't he just leave him alone?' someone else might say.) 

('That's beside the point,' he would snap in reply.) 

(Fortunately, or perhaps _un_fortunately, he doesn't_ have_ anyone else.)

\---

The selkie brought Smith back to his ramshackle seaside home, sometimes. It was a small, largely open-air beachhouse, barely off the beach itself, and made largely of pale driftwood and seashells. He sincerely doubted the selkie had built it himself. More likely he had simply found it adequate to his liking, and moved in. Smith wondered if he killed the previous owner. Then the selkie touched him _just like that_ and he stopped wondering. 

"Hey," he murmured, staring up at the driftwood ceiling through half-lidded eyes from the bed. "How long are you planning on staying here?" 

For once, he didn't mean anything on the larger scale. But he'd looked around the little shack and he hadn't seen a single possession more personal than the bed, the table, and some empty shelves. He was curious. 

The selkie shifted, crawled up his body, cheeks flushed and eyes dilated. Smith's hands moved automatically to hold his sides, a steadying touch more gentle than he could ever remember giving. 

"As long as it takes," the selkie murmured in reply after a moment of thought, and leant in to kiss him. 

Smith kissed back, softly, and then murmured against his lips: "As long as what takes?"

The selkie paused a moment, before replying. "To get my fill." 

They went back to kissing, for a while, then. Smith scrunched a hand in the selkie's shirt, holding him down against him. The selkie cupped his face, his neck, brushed fingers through his hair. All movements lazy, relaxed. 

"What then?" Smith asked, as they parted. 

The selkie shrugged, and Smith felt the movement through the elbows propped on his chest. "Who knows? Wander on to someplace else, I suppose." His eyes flicked down to Smith's lips and back up, and he smiled, slightly. "I'm not quite finished here, though." 

He leant in to kiss again, but Smith spoke again before he could. "Would you ever go back to the sea?" 

At the interruption, the selkie's lips curled and he chuckled. "_No_," he murmured emphatically, and Smith believed him. "No, I'm never going back there."

Smith stroked his sides, slowly, without really realising. "Isn't it dangerous on land, though, for your kind?" 

The selkie's expression soured, but retained the affection in it. He stroked a slightly patronising thumb over Smith's cheek. "It's dangerous for _everyone_. For my kind, there are predators in the sea... and there are predators on land, of a different sort. Either way, one must learn to live with them."

The selkie's eyes narrowed into a glare, then, that Smith was only fairly sure wasn't actually aimed at him. "But forgive me if I'd rather choose to leave behind the passivity of life as a seal, unable to speak or even hold a tool, _at one with the elements_," he rolled his eyes, "and come on land, where I could cause mountains to crumble and seas to part if I wished. There's danger, yes, but there's also _such _opportunity."

Smith licked his lips, watching. The selkie's eyes went to the movement, returning to the present. 

"I don't understand you," Smith murmured into the space between them. A mildly inappropriate response, maybe, but it worked, for them. The selkie didn't respond out loud, but stroked a thumb over his cheek, looking so deeply into his eyes Smith felt strangely honoured, for a moment. There was a strange look in the selkie's eyes Smith couldn't quite place. It was almost a question, he thought, almost asking. 

Then Smith steeled himself, just slightly. "Well -" he breathed, and curved his lips into a more usual smile. He took a hold of the selkie's hips, flipped them over on the bed so he was on top, hovering. The selkie landed on his back, as a smile spread across his lips. 

"I'm not quite finished here either," Smith finished, genuine eyes flicking from the selkie's lips to his eyes. He leant in to kiss him, and the selkie pressed up to meet him. 

\---

"You should clear out, kelpie," a creature with a crown embroiled into the top of its twisted, treelike head said to Smith. Menacing as it was strange for such a nature-orientated creature to be so. "That seal... _thing _is going down." A groaning, gravelly sort of voice that reminded Smith of the forests that used to be his playground. "If you continue to associate with it, you will go down with it. We here of the Circle will guarantee it." 

A wind buffeted Smith's hair on the rooftop terrace they stood on. He took a drag of his cigarette, and blew the smoke to the wind before replying. He was mildly disappointed when the smoke didn't end up in the spriggan's face. 

"You know, I really don't have as much to do with him as you lot seem to think," he murmured, with an air of little care. 

"I do not care, kelpie," the spriggan grumbled. "I am here only as a gesture of goodwill. You, though a pest of a sort, have not caused significant trouble for those more important than yourself, such as us." 

"Yeah, yeah," Smith mumbled, and went to lean on the half-wall encircling the roof. He watched the skyline, grey with the early morning, and blew another puff of smoke into the air. 

The spriggan rolled its eyes and muttered something about _"pathetic low creatures" _and _"why do I bother" _and left. 

\---

"One of them came and spoke to me the other day," Smith muttered to the selkie straddling his lap on the chair they shared in a corner of his apartment. 

The selkie paused for a half a second in his achingly slow process of undoing Smith's shirt. Then he smiled, a little, to himself. "The Circle, I'm guessing." 

"Mm," Smith agreed, suddenly suspicious. "How did you know?"

The selkie grinned, but still didn't meet his eyes, fingers easing buttons out from crisp white holes. It was anything but a show of submission. More of a show of his lack of concern. "It's possible they may have caught wind of my plans." Then he met Smith's eyes, and his small grin was the most irritating thing Smith had ever seen. "Nothing to worry about, Smith."

Smith shook his head, at a loss, even as the selkie returned to his task. "Why do you have to-- Why do you have to _do _this?" The selkie sent him a brief sceptical sort of look and he backtracked. "I mean-- I know-- I know _why_, but why _this_? Why can't you just go after - y'know... smaller, _easier_ prey? Leave the major players to their own devices?" 

The selkie sort of sat back then, and gave him a flat, judgemental sort of look. He didn't open his mouth, though, so Smith continued. 

"They're going to tear you apart," he said slowly, looking deep into his eyes, wishing hard he could impress the earnestness of his words onto the selkie. Restraining his anger in favour of an exhausted kind of honesty. "Why can't you just leave them _alone_?"

For a long moment, the selkie just squinted at him, head cocked. Then, he spoke: "What did they say?" 

"What?" 

"The one from the Circle, what did they come to say?"

Smith had his fingers tangled in the pocket and belt loops of the selkie's shorts, ensnared to him. He ran a free thumb over the fabric. "It... told me to stay away from you."

With the admission, after a moment, something in the selkie's expression changed. A twinge of satisfaction. He relaxed, slumped slightly. Point made. His hands drifted to Smith's shoulders. "And here you are," he murmured to him. A statement with more weight than either of them wanted to declare out loud. 

Smith frowned. 

The selkie ducked in to kiss him but Smith turned away. Annoyance building. "No," he said. Then he met the selkie's gaze, and his voice hardened with viciousness. "No, I won't let you." 

The selkie slumped back with an irritated sigh. "_Smith_," he started. 

But Smith cut him off. "Is death the _only_ thing that's going to fucking stop you?" Then, before the selkie could reply: "Because it will. Make no mistake. They'll rip you limb from limb and then what the fuck'll be the point of all this?"

The selkie groaned and rolled his eyes, but Smith was on a roll now. "And you're a fucking _selkie_. Don't think they've forgotten. Sometimes I think _you've _forgotten." Smith shook his head, lip curling, as the selkie's eyes narrowed, showing genuine anger for the very first time he'd seen. "At some point you're going to fuck up, someone's going to get their grubby fucking hands on your fucking _skin_ -"

At the word, the selkie's face flashed with fury and he finally shoved himself up off Smith's lap, turning to walk away. Smith rose and followed, volume increasing. "- and then fucking what? It'll be fucking _over_, _worse _than death, because that's what you're on the run from, isn't it? It doesn't matter where you end up, because you detest stillness, lack of action, lack of _use of power_!" He was full-on shouting at this point.

But then the selkie spun and at the end of his rope, shouted right back at him. "_SO DO YOU!_"

Smith's words died in his throat and he froze. And the selkie wasn't done. He marched right back up to Smith, pointed finger raised.

"_That's _why you won't leave me alone! You've spent so long _telling _yourself all those things that you've _nearly_ started _believing _it!" 

Smith didn't want to acknowledge that his mouth was hanging open. He didn't want to acknowledge a lot of things. He remained paralysed. 

"How long did you _hide _in the _shadows_," the selkie continued viciously, "waiting for someone like _me _to come along and snap you out of it? To prove that _you don't have to_?" He scoffed. "You're the lowest of the low here in the city, Smith, and _don't_ try and tell me you're satisfied with it!"

Smith half-opened and closed his mouth, but his words had choked somewhere in his throat. The selkie didn't looked the slightest surprised with the reaction. But he was taking a moment to breathe, relaxing, words coming to a close. 

"Because I've _seen _what that looks like, Smith," he continued, imploring. "It's all I knew for a long time." He shook his head, and his eyes were gentler, sympathetic. "And you're not it."

Smith didn't reply for a long moment. 

_Oh_, was all his mind helpfully supplied. 

"...I still don't want you going after the Circle," he muttered, the most appropriate response. His eyes shifted, not entirely settled on whether they were meeting the selkie's or not. 

But then he caught the selkie's small, genuine smile at his words, and settled on that instead.

"Well, Smith." The selkie crossed his arms and sidled closer, bringing them nose to nose, head tipped back. "If you feel so strongly, maybe you should _do _something about it." 

And then he was leaving, out through the apartment door, and Smith hesitated for about a second. But then he made his feet move. 

"Wait." He was out the door too. "Wait. No. Stop." 

Spilling out from the alley, onto the street, chasing the selkie's heels. He went ignored.

"I thought you wanted to conquer cities - how can you do that if you're fucking _dead?_" he shouted after him, trying to shove through the crowd of mostly-oblivious humans. 

But ahead, the selkie actually _laughed_ at that. He called back, "You really think so highly of them?"

"W-" Smith felt like he was grasping at straws. At this selkie's tethers. "Well - yes! The Circle'll fucking kill you, they're a bunch of hardasses, they don't make exceptions!"

"What, unlike everyone else I've gone against?" came the call back. The selkie wasn't taking him seriously in the slightest. 

"_Yes!_" Smith stressed. 

He was fighting the crowd, but hardly getting anywhere. The magic was helping the selkie. That _shitting_ selkie. 

He gave up on moving, and instead shouted, nearly shrieked: "TELL ME HOW!" By some miracle, the selkie stopped, on the verge of vanishing, to listen.

Absolute desperation lead him to yell the words. "Tell me how I can _stop_ you!" 

"You _can't_, Smith," the selkie sighed as he turned, sounding exhausted. And he meant it, as well. The straws were growing thinner. "_But_," the selkie began in a different tone, and Smith froze. 

"If you try hard enough," the offer came, the smile on his lips negating any real hope Smith may have felt. "You _might_ be able to fool yourself into thinking you actually have a chance." 

The selkie winked, then. Smile full of threat and promise, just for Smith. And potential farewell. 

Then he turned away and vanished behind bodies, hailed a cab or something, as Smith chased and spun out into the street. A car honked sharply behind him. He ignored it, and watched the cab ahead squeal away into the free lane in the midday traffic. 

He was _sick_ of that. Sick, sick, _sick_. 

He wouldn't let it happen again. Never _fucking_ again.

His hands trembled at his sides. 

He stared, face twisting, teeth grinding, eyes blazing. Probably a right sight for any passing human. 

A grasping, reaching, flailing sort of rage filled his chest. One that urged him to do _something_, _anything_, to regain even an inch of control. 

That selkie was going to go to the Circle, the _fucking _Circle so infamous for their cut-throat approach to ruling, and they were going to kill him. Unless Smith could stop him. 

\---

He turned the selkie's beach house upside down in his search. 

Upended furniture, tore up floorboards, ripped apart every odd corner with a potential nook for concealment. 

He found it eventually outside, under the house, in a cranny buried under rocks and sand and earth. 

Smith held the pelt in his hands, running his fingers over soft fur. It was alive. Its magic was very, very faint, but there. He sensed the slight panic inside it, as he brushed the sand from its creases. He felt a tentative sort of rush himself - of joy, of anticipation, of fear - to be holding it at long last. This thing was the key. A rush of memories of every selkie story he'd ever heard, ever witnessed, each having surfaced in his mind so clearly over the past weeks. 

He left; stomped away back up the beach, sealskin gripped tight in hand. Already casting paranoid glances about. 

He didn't look at the sun setting across the ocean, the red and gold and pink waves it sent bleeding across the sea and sky. 

\---

In his apartment, he sat and looked at the thing for long while. He didn't want to linger on the doubts burning in the back of his mind. But he couldn't help stopping to contemplate. This would change everything. He couldn't just stash it away and pretend nothing was out of the ordinary. 

After a few minutes, he did just that. 

He lasted fifteen minutes before grabbing his jacket and slamming the door behind him. 

\---

He followed the scent of the selkie's presence, lingered in a backalley to wait for him. He expected it to feel different. Well, it did. But he didn't feel any noticeably more in control. He gave himself a mental boot to shake away his bizarre nerves. Tapped his fingers on his arm, crossed and recrossed his arms, failed at forcing himself not to pace. Eyes unseeing on the gritty shadows on the ground cast by streetlamps and passing cars. 

Eventually, the selkie wandered up from somewhere deeper in the maze of alleyways. He was looking down at his hands - stained red, Smith saw in the sparse, gleaming light. 

"Hi, Smith," he called lightly, glancing up. He wasn't acting any different. _Why _wasn't he acting any different? 

Smith didn't reply, mouth gone oddly dry, but the selkie didn't think anything of it. He'd gone back to inspecting his hands, turning them over, rubbing at a particularly stubborn spot. 

"I need to go back to your place, I think," the selkie was murmuring. "I should really get this stuff off."

"Is it from a human?" Smith asked shortly, tongue unsticking in the lubricant of familiar irritation. 

The selkie stuck his tongue out at him, with a playfulness that gave Smith all the answer he needed. "None of your business, kelpie." 

"I think it is, actually," Smith snapped back, squinting to level a glare. Didn't want to recognise his heart starting to beat quicker. "You're not going to be going after the Circle any more."

"Oh, yeah?" the selkie replied, unconcerned, hardly looking at him. "I thought I made it clear I don't care what you think. Or that I especially believe you," he added, quieter.

Smith's blood boiled, grasping at the straws of what was _fucking happening right now_.

"I... _don't give a shit_, okay?" he gasped. 

The selkie looked at him then, frowning, as Smith moved closer, shoulders tense. He shoved a finger in the selkie's face, who jumped back, startled. Smith followed, unintentionally looming. "You _really _think you have a _fucking _choice?" The selkie's brown eyes flicked him up and down, with a confused frown. Clearly trying to piece together what was going on. "You don't get to just run around doing whatever the fuck you want any more." Smith felt a release of some sort with the words, a weight beginning to lift from his shoulders. "Now, you will do as _I_ say." 

He watched the selkie's face carefully. Watched his lips part, and something like realisation appear in his eyes. 

"You took my skin," the selkie breathed, expression so shocked, eyes wide and brows creased, in almost disbelief, that Smith felt a jolt of uncertainty. A flash of shockingly genuine fear that he'd fucked up. That this wasn't the right thing to do. That he'd lose everything he'd gained in the past short while. 

But then, something changed - the selkie's lips curled upwards into a wide smile, eyes clearing, filled with utter glee. No trace of the fear that Smith had, for just a second, been so afraid of seeing. 

No, instead, there was only the infuriating look of absolute delight, so familiar - only doubled tenfold, teeth shining a million watts. As though, somehow, _somehow_, even now, everything had gone exactly according to plan. 

"Oh, _Smith_," the selkie murmured, grinning. 

"_What_\--" Smith gaped, blindsided. "What the _fuck _are you smiling about?" 

"_Smith_," the selkie interrupted calmly. He stepped in, reaching up to wind his arms round Smith's neck. Still smiling. Smith let him, lost. "I think you maybe underestimate me. Like everyone else. But that's okay." He winked. "Useful, oftentimes." 

"_What_?" Smith gasped, scowling. "Are you completely crazy? Do you not _know _how this works?"

The selkie shrugged. "I don't know specifics, to be fair. But I certainly know _enough_." 

Smith watched him, for some hint of sense in his bravado in the face of such a change. Because the selkie may be an idiot, but he _definitely _wasn't stupid. "Then you _know _what happens next. You'll do as I say. You won't go after the Circle. You won't go... _gallivanting_ as though there're no such thing as consequences!"

The selkie put on a contemplative look at the proclamation, and gave a thoughtful hum. For a moment, Smith nearly let himself hope something had gotten through to him. That this - all this, this exhausting ever ongoing fight - was finally over. 

But then the expression dropped and he tapped a finger to Smith's lips, and whispered: "_No_." 

Smith felt something crumble inside him as the selkie slunk out from around him, and walked away, bloodstained hands hidden in denim pockets. 

He halfway out of the alleyway when Smith managed to grasp and grapple together his very last remnants of energy. 

"You're," he ground out, halfheartedly. "You're supposed to be _bound _to me." 

The selkie laughed, a little, and turned. "Think about it, Smith. Was it ever really _me _who was bound to _you_?" 

And Smith was powerless, completely powerless, to do anything but watch him leave. Again. 

\---

Smith lingered in the alley for a while, staring into space. Then he wandered the city for a bit. Aimless, ignoring the draw of potential meals, and theirs to him. One foot after another. Gazing down, he almost imagined them turning to hooves. But he restrained the thought. 

Eventually, he stopped, and stared up at the sky. Grey and starless. Clouded to conceal the stars from the night's tension, building in pockets on the North side of town. For once, he didn't chase it. 

At some point, he found his way home, and stared around his tiny flat. His eyes settled on the spot he knew concealed the thing that was supposed to solve all this.

Maybe the skin was defective. Maybe the selkie he knew was different to others. Maybe selkie magic just didn't work the way he'd assumed it did.

He didn't know. He felt exhausted and empty. Empty like he hadn't felt in a long time. Probably ever. In a strange way where he felt like he'd been climbing a mountain for a very long time, and now he'd reached the topmost edge - a precipice, into an abyss. He didn't know where'd end up if he let himself fall. But he didn't know if he could stay where he was; perfectly balanced on a knife's edge.

Could he go back? Could he pretend none of this had ever happened, and move on? It wasn't like he hadn't ever met someone who left something of an impact in all his centuries of life. He'd always managed to move on before. 

He could do it. He had to. What other choice was there? The selkie wouldn't have him. The selkie would take on the Circle, and the selkie would die. That's all there was to it. Smith would go on living. Like he always did. He didn't need anyone else. He didn't need any_thing_ else. 

\---

So that's all. 

\---

He sat and ignored the flares of activity at the edges of his conscious. 

\---

He slept (he didn't) and ignored the familiar flickers, the familiar presence, tangled in the new flavour of foreign anger. 

\---

The sun rose in his tiny, dirty apartment window, and he didn't look at it; all it carried, all it saw. Its silent judgement of all. 

\---

He paced his apartment. Glared at his leather jacket slung on the chair. Such a headache building. 

He tore his eyes away and swore not to look at it again. 

\---

Sat in a corner with his knees pulled to his chest, he jumped - a jolt ran through him. Something had happened. 

Heart hammering, he fixed his gaze on a spec of dust, trying very hard to not focus as hard as he was on that sixth sense, trying to get a feel for what happened. Trying to tell if it was over. 

The tension flared back up with a hint of playfulness in the rising fury, and he sagged in relief. 

\---

He never been so hyperaware of the citywide web of magic before. He'd mostly ignored his ability to tap into it, only noticing enough to be kept vaguely in the loop of magical city events. He wondered if he'd ever feel it like this again. Pounding in his head, growing louder the more he tried to force it away. 

\---

It was afternoon when he snapped. Such a real intent of _danger _building; of absolute, mouthwatering _violence_; a force poised against his selkie. 

He yanked his leather jacket up and left. No plan, no common sense. 

_Afternoon_. About the least dramatic time of day to pick. He silently cursed himself. Could have at least been _earlier_, if he was going to snap at some point.

He got a cab, the best option - the roads weren't as busy at midweek. Barked a vague address to the driver, leapt out as soon as he was within range, barrelling through streets. He was outside the sunlit nondescript office block only barely before he was inside. 

He barely registered the dark, monstrous hordes inside - horns, branches, hair, scales - flashed past them quick enough not to be stopped. Sweeping stairs taking up nearly the entire entrance room and an enormous open doorway at the top lead to his destination. Now, the nearest of the crowds were turning, snarls starting, and hands and a serrated spear struck for him, to block his path - he dodged and wove between them without stopping, without really looking. Because then, past the open doors and metal chandelier above, he found his goal - in the the very centre of the throng, a selkie; standing straight-backed and at ease before a large figure. And, between the two: clearly a head guard of some sort, with a jagged spear hefted high and horizontal, mid-thrust forth, aimed for the unflinching selkie's heart. 

Smith didn't hesitate and didn't think - he surged forth out from the fray and slammed a forearm out into the side of the spear, throwing it off course and nearly wrenching it from the guard's grip. 

A moment of silence deafened the place. But an outraged, mostly-muted kind of fury soon took hold - spitting, scathing noises from the crowd, eyes going wide or slitted with fury. 

Then, from behind him, at a perfectly calm, normal speaking level, yet to Smith audible above anything:

"Right on time." 

Smith turned, to see the selkie was smiling at him. Oddly, there was nothing secretive about it. The selkie's expression was completely open. A little pleased, a little relieved, and above all - excited. 

Smith felt something strange, too, clear as day. He felt _honoured_. 

He heard a growing snarl, and turned back around. The guard's shock had worn off, and her lips were pulling back into a snarl, yellow eyes narrowing, grip shifting on her weapon. There was something distinctly catlike about her. 

"Wait." The word echoed out from the broad figure on the other side of the guard. The Circle's head.

She turned to another in the standing half-circle of high-up Circle members, fanning out on her either side on a raised platform, clearly for this exact purpose. "_What _is _that_?"

One member shifted uncomfortably, its twisting branch offshoots swaying a little.

"That is the kelpie, my Lady," the spriggan mumbled, avoiding eye contact. "Clearly its nonintelligence has lead it to follow its selkie companion to both their undoings."

The Lady raised a thick eyebrow, looking back down at Smith. She had something of the build of a dwarf - surly and large and muscled - only much, much taller. She wore something glowing inside a silver casket hung on a chain around her strong neck. "Indeed. Selkie, what say you to this development?"

Smith, with no immediate threats, shifted back to the selkie's side. The selkie, centre stage once more, shrugged at the Lady's question. 

"I think that your chances grow ever slimmer by the second." He smiled, serene. He didn't use the correct form of address. 

The Lady smiled, wan. "Do you think you can kill me, selkie?"

"Probably," he shot back, musing. "But maybe I don't need to." 

She huffed in disbelief at that. "Do you really think you are in a position of leverage right now, selkie? Look around you." She spread her arms wide, indicating the hordes packed into the building's every crevasse, who began hollering and braying, awaiting their promised blood.

Over the noise, she continued: "It's time to wake up from your dreamland, now, selkie. No one gets to do whatever they please in this world. Least of all a mere seal fresh out of the sea." She shook her head, amused. "No, your reign of chaos, spreading an infection of dissent across the city, making lowly creatures like him," - she indicated to Smith - "think they're worth anything, is over." 

"Oh," the selkie murmured beneath his breath, as the Lady looked to her guard and Smith curled his hands into fists and spread his feet apart just slightly, readying. "That's a shame." 

"Kill them," the Lady ordered in a snap. 

The catlike guard shifted and growled, spear braced, but Smith moved first so her eyes fixed on him. The spear swung forward in a movement so sleek it would have skewered a human, but he'd shifted to the side in almost the exact same motion. He groped the air and grabbed it, but no sooner had he done so then she'd jerked it and used the momentum to swung up and sink a heel into his stomach. He stumbled but absorbed the blow and growled, and twisted the spear to bash the end of the thin but weighty metal bar up into her face.

It _clang_ed when it struck and she reeled back, furious, and snarled, and somehow yanked the thing back out of his grip, but she hadn't righted the staff in time to intercept his lunge - hands freed, he grabbed her head and arm, which left her so off balance she hadn't a foothold to prevent him smashing her face down into his knee. Blood spattered and at least one thing cracked loudly and she fumbled at his arm, stunned. Snarling, he braced his hands and began pulling - her body and head ripped apart all he could envision. 

"GUARDS!" the Lady barked. 

Smith looked up and threw the dizzy, half-conscious head guard aside; the crowd surrounding them - looking half cowed, half furious - rapidly skittered backwards to make room as a ring of more guards entered the cleared circle. About eight, each of different races, each with a serrated spear in hand. 

The selkie - unchallenged directly insofar - narrowed his eyes and shifted into more of a fighting stance, shifting surreptitiously closer to Smith. He still didn't look exactly concerned - the shadow of a playful curl remained somewhere at the edge of his lips. 

The breath of air was all they got - the guards sunk their spears to their level and charged. 

The three in front of Smith swung for him and he couldn't choose between dodging or covering the selkie. As it turned out, he couldn't quite do both - mid-swivel a spear scraped through the top of his shoulder and he hissed in pain. He didn't dare look down, but he was fairly sure the slit was shallow - the spear slid through and was retracted by its owner.

Something in his awareness was missing and he realised the selkie had vanished, but he didn't have time to linger on the thought - forced to make a gamble, he dived under the outstretched spear of the closest guard and made a wild grasp and successfully locked arms around the guard's torso. He swivelled and threw him into a startled comrade, sending them both crashing to the floor.

His regained space to breathe lasted barely a moment before more were upon him. He wasn't sure where the selkie had gone, but there were definitely more than half the guards on him, so he thought it was probably alright.

He dodged a thrust spear, and its deliverer ducked away to avoid a repeat of his previous tactic, but Smith wasn't planning on it - he took the break gladly and turned to deal with the unsuspecting guard behind him, caught a little too close with no plan.

The guard - a little younger than the others maybe - startled and moved to jerk the spear into position but it was too late - Smith grabbed his hand with spear snared inside, yanked him forward to plant a knee in his stomach in the same motion. While the guard gasped for breath, Smith turned his fist and sunk the speartip straight into the poor guard's eye socket. The guard had enough brainpower left to squeal and struggle, but quickly cut off; wet and choked and rigid, with blood and clear liquid running down his face from the popped eyeball. 

The gore was nothing to Smith - a few hundred years of life as a naturally violent creature will do that - but he followed the embedded spear down, in attempt to yank it back out and take for his own, and it was nearly his undoing. He glanced up just in time to dive away to the side and have the space his head had just occupied neatly skewered by another guard's spear. Smith rolled - a risky move - and sprung back up before he reached the wall of hollering bodies surrounding the ring of space cleared for the fight.

Eyes glared and lips sneered from the glimpse he got but he didn't linger on them; they weren't an immediate threat, content to jeer and screech from the sidelines. Though he wasn't sure they'd stay that way indefinitely - there was a bloodlust in their eyes he knew from experience would go unsatisfied til the bitter end. 

A rush and the slightest whistle of air was all that lead him to surge to the side and wildly grab the air where he'd just been. He yanked the spear out of the air and for a split second he held it in his hand, but he knew from experience not to hesitate - he swivelled and threw it hard. The chosen guard reacted in surprise, tried to both dodge and knock it out of the air but couldn't do both - it sunk with a _thunk _into the left of her neck, severing her jugular with a squirt of blood, maybe windpipe too.

She grasped for the wound blindly for a moment, in shock, eyes wide. He saw her legs give out, and that was the last he saw of her - he had to dodge out of the way of a spear's thrust, handheld this time, and ran headlong into a hard punch - delivered by the other, now weaponless guard. Smith stumbled back, thrown. 

Knocked and head spinning, he looked up and tried to brace, fear for his own life rushing to the forefront of his awareness. The spear was already surging for him, the guard's lips carved into a snarl, and Smith tried to make himself move but stumbled at even that - there was no way he'd be able to dodge. 

_Thunk _\- there was a knife embedded in the guard's neck. Both Smith and the guard froze. The guard gurgled, and raised his free hand to clutch fruitlessly at the knife. 

There wasn't time to watch him die - the remaining guard turned to glare down the selkie. 

The stabbed guard fell away - the selkie behind him wore a growing grin. He danced out of the way of the spearless guard's swing and gave a flash of a knife in the same motion, slicing a deep cut in the guard's arm, spurting blood. The guard whipped back the arm with an infuriated growl, giving Smith, now recovered, the chance to crack his own fist into the back of the guard's head.

The guard's legs gave out with the knock and he stumbled and went down, clutching the back of his head and dripping blood, but they couldn't pause to finish him off - there were still four more guards, each approaching with apprehension and rage in equal parts in their eyes; not to mention the crowd, growing steadily more incensed behind and all around them. 

The selkie locked eyes with Smith, eyes glowing hot. 

"Distract," he ordered in a whisper. Smith nodded. 

The guards reached him and Smith grabbed the first spear that swung for him and yanked it - the guard went with it and stumbled and Smith delivered a hard kick to the side of their head, making them release the spear and go crashing to the ground. Two more spears came for him and he manged to knock one of course with his own but the other landed in the side of his chest.

Smith cringed and swore viciously and took the chance - he threw the spear in his hand at the offending guard. Unfortunately, it glanced off the guard's face without sinking in, but not without damage - a vicious scrape lead from just barely off the guard's eye to his ear, now mangled and severed. The guard hollered and clutched at it as Smith stumbled away and took the dangerous opportunity to look down, grasping the embedded spear to keep it still.

It wasn't deep - he'd gotten lucky, it must have stopped at a rib. Still hurt like an absolute bitch. Red, heated blood was rapidly soaking through and running down his front. It had avoided his leather jacket, at least. 

It was metal, he wouldn't be able to break it, but he definitely needed it gone. He braced himself and yanked it out with a pained grunt through his teeth - just in time to glance up and dive to the side out of the way of another spear. Another goddamn spear. 

He rolled to his feet and spun on the spot, scouring for some opportunity, from the exact centre of the ring. The two unharmed guards were approaching, spears braced. Not only that, but the three temporarily downed with injuries were recovering, fury blazing in their eyes. And beyond them, the crowd bellowed, eyes scraping into his very being with hate and bloodlust. 

Then a female _shriek _rang out and all turned in shock to look, in time to see the selkie, a diminutive figure before the Lady, throw something hard at the ground. 

The casket - its chain hanging slack, cut loose from the Lady's neck by the embellished and magically-aided knife held in the selkie's hand - smashed to a million pieces at her feet. The mysterious glow held inside vanished with a _BANG_ as it touched air. 

The Lady reeled back as though it was a physical blow. Maybe it was. 

Her fellows on her either side stared, eyes wide, hands half-raised and fingers touching weapons, frozen in the act of hurrying to defend her. 

The selkie staggered backwards, closer to Smith, breathing hard. He raised a hand and swept his hair out from his eyes in a victorious sort of way. 

"You see, Lady," he began loudly, and all eyes landed on him. Hers widened with a deep, twisting, vicious sort of rage at his arrogance in the face of whatever he'd just done to her. "I don't have to _kill _you to destroy you." 

"_What _have you _done?_" the Lady ground out from between her teeth. Smith didn't think her hair was hanging so slack a few moments ago, nor that her face was so drawn, eyes sunken. 

The selkie ignored her. "Your power isn't even real, you stole it from a _museum _a century ago," he continued, laughingly. "All I've done is return things to the way they're supposed to be. Really, you all should be thanking me," he called, turning on the spot and raising his hands to the frozen, silent hordes. 

"_What_," the Lady snarled into the dead silence, shaking with fury, "are you _waiting for_, you _fools." _

Sensing what was coming, Smith shifted uneasily on the spot. He stared round at the vast hordes, at the rage returning to their eyes, claws unsheathing, teeth baring. Not to mention the guards still surrounding them, fingers tightening on their spears and eyes narrowing. 

"_GET THEM!_" the Lady roared. 

Smith only had a glimpse of what was becoming of her - muscles wasting away, eyes sinking, skin losing its colour and crumpling as her form sunk in. As though the years - many, many years - were finally catching up to her. 

He glanced at the hordes as they unleashed - an absolute _scream _shaking the place to its very core, lust for killing finally coming to a brink. 

He reached out and grabbed the selkie's shoulder, similarly transfixed by the unleashing chaos, hauled him in, and did something he hadn't done in over a century. 

He ducked his head, feeling a weight grow in every pit of his body. In that instant, his clothes became a part of him, melding with the rest of his being and withdrawing. The floor backed away beneath him, and his vision widened - 350 degrees of a seething, coiling room wasn't a pretty sight. 

Ink-black hooves hit the ground running and the selkie lurched in surprise to find himself astride a moving horse's back - he caught on quick, though, taking Smith's mane in an iron grip and hanging on for dear life. 

Anyone sensible knows to get out of the thundering path of an ordinary horse - for a _kelpie_, woe betide those who got in its way. 

He barrelled through the throbbing crowd, knocking to the ground and crushing a hand, a knee, a head underfoot. The trail of screaming, moaning destruction in his wake surged closed almost as soon as it appeared, as piles upon piles of blood-crazed thralls threw themselves at him for a chance at landing an injury. They grabbed at his precious cargo and he tried to kick and shove them away without dislodging the selkie. He just had to trust he'd cling on. 

The staircase that appeared below him nearly threw him off balance, lurching them both forwards. He made it through by the skin of his teeth - and by the skin and the bones disappearing between his hooves and the floor. 

The doors - the ordinary, office block doors with clear floor-to-ceiling windows on either side (enchanted, obviously) - appeared only paces before him; paces filled thick with sneering bodies blocking his path. Hesitating would do no good - he crashing headlong into them, crushing and shoving aside all those in his path, and then the doors were right there. 

He had the barest moment to pray they would open, and for the selkie on board his back to duck, before he crashed into them.

They opened, and the dying sun's light burst into life overhead. He didn't stop. The hordes had to be following, he knew - worse, maybe one of those high-up lords or ladies and their far more dangerous influence. 

He streaked down footpaths, across streets, down alleyways - past startled humans, on their way home or out to the pub. They probably didn't even see him; just a flash of a presence and a clattering of hooves. They'd probably go rave about the experience to some friends, and be laughed at for hallucinations or pre-drinking drunkenness. Humans always underestimate their perceptions. Quite useful, really. 

The sun was low and mostly invisible behind towers of metal and glass - flashing into dazzling brightness on occasion while he ducked and served past corners and side streets and through the busier sections of the city, trying every trick in the book to lose their pursuers. 

The collective malicious, snarling presence chasing them receded and stretched outwards, thinning as the hordes scattered in their search. But Smith kept pushing. He couldn't stop, not yet. He couldn't risk it. 

The sun had ducked fully behind the horizon when they reached in an overgrown, abandoned park on the far edge of town, full of thorns and tree roots. The skyscrapers and lights of the city looked small, a sea of rundown districts and homes stretched behind them instead, before they were concealed behind branches and shadows.

Bit by bit Smith slowed - to a canter, a brisk trot, and then a plodding, exhausted walk. 

Finally, satisfied with the faintness of all - the hostile forces hunting them as well as everything else of any possible danger - he halted, in a tiny clearing completely concealed from the outside world by trees and brush, but for the stars twinkling into clarity overhead in the grey-orange sky. 

His head sagged, nostrils flaring with breath. The selkie on his back, panting, seemed much inclined to do the same, sliding a leg over to thud back onto the ground, and stumbling over to slump against a nearby tree. 

"Fucking _Christ_," the selkie gasped, amber eyes wide. "I've never even been on a fucking horse before. Holy _fuck_." He bent double, hands on his knees, gasping for breath. 

Smith's human feet reappeared beneath him as he moved, the transition sending him stumbling. Clothes found their place on his back while his skin reformed and bones set. The whole thing was painless, but doubly exhausting after all the activity of the night. He staggered over to collapse on the nearby crumbling half-wall, holding back the bank alongside the remains of the park's path. 

"Sorry," he muttered in reply, chest heaving. He sent a look over to the selkie. "You okay?"

The selkie straightened upright and nodded, still looking decidedly dazzled. "Yeah. You?"

"Um." Smith looked down, at the thick patch blood on the front of his shirt; over, at the congealed slice on his shoulder. "Sort of." 

The selkie saw and frowned. "Will you be okay?"

"Yeah," Smith replied. "I'm a kelpie, I'll be fine. The spears weren't poisoned or anything." 

"Oh," the selkie breathed back, surprised. "Good." 

For a moment, they simply panted, regaining breath, the sound deadened in the earthy quiet of the undergrowth. Heart rates slowly resembling a more healthy rate. Then, out of nowhere, the selkie broke into a fit of high, hysterical giggles; the sound bubbling up from somewhere deep within. Smith didn't have the energy to do anything but watch. 

Eventually, head tipped to the stars, the selkie gasped out: "I can't believe we actually made it out of there!"

Smith blinked at the statement, and his gaze fell to the ground. "Yeah, I guess we did," he mumbled. 

It was only then the night's events (and his own actions - had he really done that? Directly defied a major organisation?), started catching up with him. Sinking in. 

"Well, Smith," the selkie murmured after a moment, tone salacious enough to make Smith look up. The selkie had a grin on his lips, small and delighted. "Your first taste of anarchy. What was it like?"

He pushed off the tree, and began moving closer. 

Smith wetted his lips, watching, from his seat on the wall, and thinking. 

"Strange," he decided. 

The selkie stood before him. Smith flicked his eyes up, met his, deep, reassuring gaze. "But not... unenjoyable."

He reached out, ran a hand up the selkie's side, and then the other. 

The selkie raised a brow. "But wasn't it _dangerous_?" he teased. 

"Very," Smith murmured. "For you, mainly." 

The selkie's brows turned slightly downwards, into an annoyed frown, so Smith continued. He shook his head and laughed, slightly, disbelievingly. Knowing this time he couldn't _possibly_ be denied. 

"You _know _you would have died if I hadn't showed up."

But at that, the selkie's face smoothed back into an easy smile, and Smith had the feeling he was about to receive one of those annoying rebukes he can never seem to quite get the upper hand on. A gentling hand ran through Smith's hair. 

"What if I _knew _you would show up?" The selkie smiled openly. 

Smith squinted, softly. 

"There's no way you could have known that." 

The selkie laughed and they lapsed back into silence. The closest hum of a car was very, very faint; far away in the growing night. 

"Why didn't you just tell me?" Smith mumbled. "If you had it all figured out. Had _me_ all figured out. "

The selkie stroked his hair. "That would have done more damage than good," he murmured back. "I had to wait for you to figure it out for yourself." He smiled, ruefully. "'Course, I sort of failed. Blurting it out in the middle of a fight like that."

"I am sorry," Smith said suddenly, looking up into the selkie's eyes. "For everything I said. Everything I did. I just... had to be sure." 

The selkie again ran a hand through Smith's hair. "It's okay," he breathed. "I knew you'd figure it out eventually. Besides, I liked you too much to be put off." He smiled. 

Smith eyed him. "Did you really know I would come?" 

The selkie grinned. "Yes." 

"You were _sure_?" Smith pressed, frowning. "Sure enough to risk your life on it?"

"Yes, Smith." The selkie cupped his face, laughing. "I knew each and every seed had been planted. I knew you had no excuse left. I knew your old view had been shattered to oblivion, and all I had to do was wait for the pressure to build. Thank you, though," he added, as an afterthought, with a smile. "For showing up."

Smith snorted, softly, and turned his face into the selkie's hand stroking the other side with a palm. 

"I always will," he breathed, and he tried to inject even a tiny bit of irritation into the words. Even if he didn't really feel it. 

"So what now?" the selkie murmured. 

Smith sighed, a half-grunt of annoyance. "We'll have to leave the whole damn city, I guess. I dunno know how you've survived this long, but believe me, it won't work now. The Circle has people everywhere. I'll sneak back in, swing by my place to grab my things and anything else we need. I can do that, it's fine, I'm good at slipping under the radar. Then, we can go. Somewhere." He glanced back up at the selkie. "Anywhere." 

The selkie's eyes weren't quite all the way to questioning. But still careful. "'We'?" he repeated. 

Slowly, Smith nodded. "Yeah."

Because there's no way. Not after all this. 

"Even after all I've heard of kelpies being solitary creatures?" the selkie questioned in a murmur. 

Smith chewed his lip for a moment. Then, he took the selkie's hands in his and looked at the ground. 

"I _know_ you can survive alone. I know I _have_ survived alone for hundreds of years. I know that, whatever happened today, you have ways of avoiding every spear that comes your way."

Then he took a breath, and met the selkie's eyes. "I just want to be there... to make sure." 

The selkie stayed silent, watching him. But he swallowed, and Smith saw the emotion in his eyes.

Smith continued, softly. "Kelpies don't... _serve_ anyone besides ourselves. But I'll serve _you_. For as long as you'll have me." He breathed the declaration, but it was firm, too. He knew he was sure. "I'll keep you safe. I'll keep your skin safe." 

"You're _sure?_" the selkie murmured, drawing closer. He sounded scared. Scared to dare accept it. 

"I'll protect you. Until the stars die or my heart stops beating," Smith murmured back, keeping their eyes locked. "I'll protect you."

The selkie took a few moments to breathe. Then, he murmured, "I'll hold you to that," and closed the gap. 

Smith kissed back. Without breaking contact, the selkie slid up and onto his lap, straddling. Reaching up to hold on, wrap around. 

Smith opened his mouth, and the usual push and pull was sedate, and meaningful. Not a hint of force about it, because, for once, he wasn't trying to force anything. Not a hint of secrecy, because now the selkie wasn't holding anything back. For the first time, everything was out in the open. 

Slowly, eventually, Smith took hold of the selkie and moved them, down onto the ground. Laying the selkie down as his legs wound around Smith's waist and his arms tugged him closer. 

But just as Smith was settling into this, hands tracing edges of clothes - the selkie broke off. Smith opened his eyes, confused, to find the selkie watching him, head leant back on the ground and lips curled in a certain smile that only ever meant trouble. 

Before he could ask, the selkie sighed dramatically and wound an arm around his neck. 

"You know," he began, in a tone so casual Smith knew to be suspicious. "I'm rather fond of horses. You can call me..." He grinned. "Trott."

Smith stared down dumbly at the selkie for a moment. 

"_'Trott'_?" he repeated, taken off-guard. "Not... Well, gallop or canter or something?"

"Don't be ridiculous," the selkie dismissed, as though he wasn't the guy who just named himself _Trott_. __

_ __ _

Smith stared for a moment further. Then, deciding no worldly course-correction was coming, went with it. 

_ __ _

"Alright," he murmured. "_Trott_." 

_ __ _

Trott laughed at his tone, and pulled him back in. Smith tilted his head to one side and closed the contact once again. 

_ __ _

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly - his name is _Trott_, he's besties with a _kelpie_, and this is all set in a world where _no one uses their real name_. How has no one ever done anything with this before? (Least as far as I've seen haha)
> 
> So this is a long time coming, I know. Apologies for the wait. The next actual part of the series will be coming sometime in the next month or two, hopefully. 
> 
> Trott's little ramshackle seaside home was inspired by a similar location in the equal parts cheesy and wonderful year-2000 film 'Selkie', which amused me greatly while writing. 
> 
> I also learnt at a certain point while writing this that Hat Films have utterly ruined my ability to write the word 'filthy'. It's always 'filfthy' or 'fifthy' or 'filfy' on first try, and it takes a hot second to try and figure out why it's underlined in red. Goddammit. 
> 
> To wrap up, in case it's not clear - the reason Smith could not and cannot actually use the skin to directly control Trott is because one has to truly mean it when they give an order. They have to genuinely and unsympathetically desire to control the autonomy of their subject. Smith doesn't, never did, whatever he might have told himself, so it didn't work. 
> 
> The other side of this (which may end up explained somewhere in-story but I'll explain here anyway) is, of course, Trott's point of view. That part is also quite simple. Trott was clever, and ambitious, and magically powerful, and could handle himself pretty damn well in a fight. But he wasn't invincible - actually, quite a lot _less_ so than many fae. So, he needed someone to play backup, who can take the physical threats if need be. And then he found Smith.
> 
> Fun fact I came across while trying to find out if jeans etc were even a thing back in the sixties and inevitably wound up learning the entire history of denim clothing: Did you know jeans were banned from schools in the 1950's for being too provocative? Lol.


End file.
